In a cryptographic key management system, the reliability of the system to maintain keys distributed to a plurality of end users is critical.
Conventional fault tolerant systems, such as used in banks, in which database decisions typically occur in redundant servers where the data is being stored. Thus, when a server goes down the decision to log information cannot be made unless a third server is linked to the other two servers. With only two servers in a conventional fault tolerant system, manual intervention must take place when a down server returns to an operational state. Such manual intervention occurs in other than real time processing. Such conventional systems do not include a client that establishes and maintains logs of transactions when one of the servers is down and which can resynchronize the servers in real time. Such conventional systems merely roll back the transactions and post them later. Typically, resynchronization occurs in other than real time processing.